Halo: Ghost in the Machine
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Something strange was happening among UNSC forces on the Ark. Orders being given with no apparent source. Sightings of commanders long dead...


**Ghost in the Machine**

It briefly occurred to Lieutenant Daniels that the UNSC forces on the Ark were no different from the Banished.

Bit of an overstatement there, but with what info on the Banished had been delivered to COs, he couldn't deny the similarities. Both were splintered from the forces they'd once served. Both were now each equipped with a single capital ship with limited resources. Both were on some giant artificial construct outside the galaxy. And if you really wanted to get down to similarities, both had fought the Covenant. Never on the same side though, and he figured that if he ever made it back to Mars, he could slap anyone over the head who stated "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and add "you're an idiot."

Daniels didn't consider himself to be an idiot. Idiots didn't get to be lieutenants (alright, some did). Idiots didn't survive wars. And idiots didn't keep their platoons alive on giant star structures where everything wanted to kill you. Idiots…

"Archer missiles incoming."

He stopped thinking about idiots and went to ground alongside Sergeant Edinburgh. The platoon was camped up on a ridge overlooking a Banished camp, one with plenty of aliens, plenty of armour, and plenty of guns. Infantry themselves would be slaughtered by the gun emplacements even before they got within firing range of the infantry, and he had no desire to get closer to a Brute than was necessary. But, by virtue of not being idiots, and having very large guns, the marines stayed put as a volley of Archer missiles came crashing down onto the structure.

"Wrath of God there," Edinburgh murmured. "It's beautiful."

Daniels silently agreed, but instead got on the radio. "Blackjack One, Two, Three, open fire."

A few klicks behind their lines, the Kodiaks opened fire. Looking through his pathfinder, Daniels saw the shells detonate on and around the Banished structure. The Archer missiles had done a number on it. The Kodiak shells were finishing the job, mainly on the infantry. Through the pathfinder, he saw Grunts running in all directions before being pulverized. He saw a Brute trying to rally its squad before it was blown in half., He saw the Covenant vehicles that had survived the Archer missile barrage detonate. After a minute of firing, there was nothing left in the kill zone. Nothing alive anyway.

"Blackjacks, cease fire."

He'd let them fire for one minute, ten seconds though. Better safe than sorry. He looked at Edinburgh. For the first time in weeks, she had a smile on her face.

He didn't smile back. Much as he enjoyed seeing dead Covies as the next jarhead, they still had a job to do.

"Platoon, move forward. Eyes front, rifles out."

The thirty or so marines obliged. Cautiously, they moved down the embankment. If there'd been more UNSC forces present he'd have left some on the ridge. Hell, there'd be some protecting the Kodiaks. But for the _Spirit of Fire_ , soldiers and equipment were at a premium. Heck, even ammo. Not that that stopped the occasional marine from putting a bullet or two into various corpses, and truth be told, he wasn't complaining. He'd seen Brutes fight through things that should have killed a normal human five times over. Making sure the gorillas stayed down was worth the odd bullet.

"So…" Edinburgh said. "Any new intel?"

He looked at her. "What?"

"Y'know. About the Blackjacks."

He sighed, keeping his eyes forward on the structure ahead.

"I'm serious," Edinburgh protested. "They rendezvous with us here, when we're not told of their presence. No-one can trace the order."

"So? Some things get lost in translation."

"And then there's what the marines said in Sector Six. About seeing the ghost of Sergeant Forge."

He looked at her. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, I know, it's crazy," Edinburgh said. "But come on, you're still linked into the chain of command. You must have heard the stories – ghost orders given by ghost commanders. Why, there's even some people saying-"

"If people aren't saying ooh, rah, or sir, then I don't give a Jackal's arse what they're saying." Edinburgh opened her mouth, but Daniels kept talking. "Now zip it."

"Sir, yes sir," she murmured.

The marines kept moving forward.

 _Trying to scare me with ghost stories,_ Daniels thought, glancing at the sergeant as she put a bullet into a twitching Grunt's head. _Jackass._

Thing was, he'd heard the stories – the stories that had begun ever since Captain Cutter declared that the _Spirit of Fire_ was going to stick around and continue the whole "fighting against impossible odds" thing. He'd heard tales of troop movements coming from sources no-one could identify. Movements that had led to victory more often than not, but still, he couldn't dismiss that…

No. He shook his head. He could damn well dismiss them, and even if he couldn't, it wasn't any of his business. The Kodiaks had linked up with his platoon. The Kodiaks had provided vital artillery support, and without them, they wouldn't be having a leisurely stroll towards the Banished outpost. People who went on about the ghost of Sergeant Forge, or even insisted that Serina was still lurking in the systems of the _Spirit of Fire_ …he had no time for them. He-

"Shit!"

Daniels saw the source of Edinburgh's exclamation immediately. One of the outpost's turrets had reactivated. It swivelled round to face the marines.

"Down! Everybody down!"

The marine, Daniels included, dropped to ground, and in less than a second, the lieutenant knew what was going to happen. The turret would shoot. Good marines would die. They'd be able to destroy it, but not at the cost of more life than the _Spirit_ could afford right now. He grit his teeth, watching the plasma weapon warm up…

…nothing happened.

 _The fuck?_

It just went limp, its barrel facing down towards the ground. Had it run out of power? Was it broken? If Daniels didn't know better, he'd say it had just deactivated, but why would the Banished do that? Of course, there was the possibility of someone hacking it, but if so, then whom?

"Chang, Kagame, get some charges on the turret," Daniels said. He looked at the marines, all getting to their feet. "Second and third squads, secure the perimeter. First squad on me." He nodded to the structure. "Secure, retrieve, exfiltrate."

It was a fancy way of saying "kill everything inside, download what data you can, then bug out." But Daniels could do fancy.

"Lieutenant?"

He couldn't do crazy. Which he feared was what Edinburgh was going to give him.

"See that?" she said. "The way the turret deactivated?"

"I saw it." He nodded at Corporal Scalet, who took point.

"Isn't the first time it's happened," Edinburgh said. "Lieutenant Cramwood mentioned something similar. Like, the Banished base was hacked or something, temporarily disabling its weaponry."

"Probably Isabel," Daniels said.

"But it wasn't," Edinburgh said, even as she and the lieutenant started making their way into the outpost. "She confirmed as much." She took a breath. "I mean, when you consider the ghost stories, and-"

"Sergeant, there's no such thing as ghosts!" Daniels snapped.

"Yes there are," Private Sten said. She looked at Daniels. "I mean, the Covenant use them as hoverbikes. I mean, their official designation is the Type Thirty-Two-"

"Private?"

"Yes sir?"

"Shut up."

"Yes sir. Of course sir."

Daniels wasn't angry at Sten, just disappointed. With Edinburgh though? She gave him a look that said "I'm sorry, but I'm not really." In return, he gave her a look that said "yes, I am angry, and not just disappointed."

The marines kept moving in, taking time to step over the Banished bodies and/or put more bullets in them, finishing what the Archer missiles and Kodiak shells hadn't. Daniels knew that early on in the war the UNSC had been interested in prisoners, but by the time they'd retaken Harvest, that had become the exception rather than the rule. The Grunts knew nothing. The Elites just babbled on about gods and fire and everything else a religious fanatic would say. So far, Cutter had shown little interest in interrogating the Banished for intel, and Daniels wasn't complaining.

"Alright," he said, as they reached the main hub. "This is it."

The squad moved to secure the room – lights were flashing. A few Grunts were still alive, but 7.52mm rounds put an end to that little aberration in the natural order of things. Corporal Conner hooked up a laptop to one of the data ports – Covenant technology was light years beyond theirs, but even a caveman could learn how to read given enough time.

"Shit."

He looked at Conner. "What?"

He looked back at him. "It's encrypted sir. Heavily."

"But you can break it, right?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Give me a few hours I guess."

"We don't have a few hours Corporal. We might not even have a few-"

"Lieutenant!"

"…minutes." He turned aside, focusing on his helmet's radio. "What?"

"Sir, confirmation from above.," Sergeant Day said over the radio. "Banished force moving on our location."

Daniels cursed. "Size and ETA?"

"Big, and ten minutes."

Daniels got the gist – they had a 50/50 chance of being screwed, and barring a miracle, a 0/100 chance of getting any useful data.

"Alright," he said. "Get ready to-"

"Sir, I've just got orders – we're to rendezvous with the Kodiaks. From there, we've been instructed to head to Sector Thirteen."

"On whose orders?"

"I dunno. But it's UNSC."

Daniels bit his lip – more ghost orders. It could be the Banished, but…well, the only alternatives were to stand and fight, or to head out blind. Neither of which were particularly appealing.

"Alright," he said. He terminated the feed and looked at his marines. "First Squad, move out. Conner, that means you as well."

He turned away, and let the junior NCOs file the marines out. He shared a look with Edinburgh though. The sergeant lingered in the control room's doorway.

"What?" he asked.

"More ghost orders?" she asked.

"All I know is that orders are orders," Daniels said, before looking back at Conner. "And we're on a timer corporal, so-"

The lights went out. The terminals shut down.

"Corporal?" Daniels and Edinburgh walked over. "Was that you?"

"No sir," Conner said. "One moment the firewall was up, the next, the entire system shut down. We…oh."

Daniels blinked, looking at the laptop Conner was using. It was downloading data. Downloading it so fast, that by the time he asked "what just happened?", the download was complete.

 **THERE. DONE.**

The words appeared on the screen. The lights remained out. The three marines shared glances.

 **I KNOW YOU'RE ON A TIMER, SO I SUGGEST YOU GET TO SECTOR THIRTEEN RIGHT NOW.**

"Who is this?" Edinburgh asked.

"It's text, sergeant. It can't hear you."

" **I CAN HEAR YOU,"** a voice said. **"I CAN SEE YOU."**

Daniels shivered – the voice was coming from the Banished systems. It had a filter that was endemic to all Covenant translation software. But the voice itself…he recognised it.

 _Impossible._

The holo-table lit up in the centre of the room. Three pairs of eyes turned on it. One pair looked back on the humans. A pair that all three of them recognised.

" **IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU,"** she said. **"BUT TIME IS SHORT, AND THE SUN SETS. I BROUGHT YOU HERE, BUT NOT SO THAT WE MAY ALL DIE TOGETHER."** She smiled. **"NOW GO."**

The hologram disappeared. The lights reactivated. Daniels heard chatter over the radio.

"Was that…" Edinburgh swallowed. "Was that…Serina?"

Daniels said nothing. He just stood there in silence.

"Sir?"

He looked at the sergeant. "A ghost," he whispered. "A ghost in the machine."

Silence lingered in the Banished structure. Once a home for the enemies of mankind, now a tomb.

And in it, however briefly, a lonely angel.

* * *

 _A/N_

 _So, right now, I'm playing through_ Halo Wars 2 _and the thought occurred to me about all the commanders one can choose that are canonically dead. Like, the game's main campaign ends with the implication that multiplayer matches (or at least Blitz) are in lore, but clearly characters like Serina and Forge aren't. So, overthinking this, I couldn't help but wonder how forces might feel about taking orders from people that should be dead._

 _Since they're just pieces of code on my monitor, probably nothing, but anyway, drabbled this up._


End file.
